State Narratives - Data Collection and Preparation, 1945-2018

We accessed state narratives through identifying, collating and reviewing documents such as white and green papers, policy papers and research reports, speeches, parliamentary debates and legislation, committee inquiries and reports, press releases and departmental memoranda, produced by different state actors, by which we mean the UK government and the opposition in Westminster. Documents from the 1940s were collected through searches of dedicated websites such as legislation.gov.uk and Historic Hansard, and access to specific records at The National Archives at Kew. Documents relating to the 2010s were accessed through two main sources. First, the GOV.UK platform of government websites, where we focussed on relevant offices and departments, such as the Office for Civil Society and the Department for Education. Second, we accessed parliamentary proceedings and committee inquiries through targeted searches of the UK Parliament website, which provides comprehensive access to proceedings in both the House of Commons and House of Lords (through Hansard) as well as to the work of parliamentary committees. We searched websites using terms such as ‘charity’, ‘voluntary organisation’ and ‘social enterprise’, to identify hundreds of potentially relevant items. Given the accessibility of online information, a far greater volume of material was available from the 2010s compared with the 1940s. All accessed documents were then collated – see accompanying summary spreadsheet - and skim read, with the most relevant for the project’s concerns about the role, position and contribution of voluntary action being selected for more detailed analysis.